March 4, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | March 4, 2026
Trump Administration News
Some key Republican senators are undecided on whether to advance the nomination of President Trump’s pick for surgeon general after she ducked tough questions on her vaccine views during a confirmation hearing last week.
Nutrition influencer Casey Means can’t lose any Republican votes in the Senate health committee, assuming all of the panel’s Democrats oppose her.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a key moderate on the panel, told Axios she still has questions after grilling Means about matters including her skepticism about giving all newborns the hepatitis B vaccine. [...]
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said “I haven’t made a decision,” adding that she is sending “additional questions” to Means.
Jerome Adams, Surgeon General during Trump’s first term, issued a pointed statement saying, “As a former U.S. Surgeon General who held an active medical license and practiced medicine while in the role (at Walter Reed and aboard the USS Comfort) it is incomprehensible that the Senate is even considering a nominee for this role who lacks any active license and has never practiced unsupervised.”
Managed Healthcare Executive: In Record-Long State Of The Union, Trump Devotes Less Than Five Minutes To Healthcare
The Trump administration announced last week that it is freezing $259.5 million in federal Medicaid funds going to Minnesota as a part of the effort to crack down on fraud. The state is suing to stop the move.
The Washington Post: Why RFK Jr. is suddenly talking less about vaccines:
Trump administration officials are downplaying their push to overhaul vaccine policy and instead touting their work on food and drug pricing, as some Republicans warn that vaccines could prove to be a liability in the midterm elections.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who started making stops in cities around the country last month, has not highlighted during the tour how his department has enacted the most sweeping and controversial reduction to the childhood vaccine schedule in decades. And Kennedy did not list his vaccine actions in a supercut video posted to social media ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech thanking the president for letting him “go wild.”
15 blue states sued the Trump administration last week over its rollback of vaccine recommendations for children.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is bailing on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and is withdrawing as a liaison organization citing scientific integrity concerns.
In related news, at a rescheduled meeting next month, ACIP plans to discuss Covid vaccine injuries, as well as potentially vote on recommendations.
In other related news, RFK Jr. added two new members to the ACIP. One is a primary care doctor who works in concierge medicine and the other appears to be a vaccine skeptic.
Joining Dr. Oz in rejecting RFK Jr.’s anti-vaxx rhetoric, acting CDC director and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya is urging people to get vaccinated for measles.
JD Vance says rural hospital closures are Joe Biden’s fault. Meanwhile, CNN reports that rural hospitals are making cuts after passage of the ‘big beautiful bill.’
The historic legacy of RFK Jr.’s time at HHS is highlighted in an op-ed in The Lancet titled, “Robert F Kennedy Jr: 1 year of failure”:
Politicians are known to break promises, but Kennedy's record, 1 year in, has been a failure by most measures, especially his own….The destruction that Kennedy has wrought in 1 year might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm.
KFF Health News: Democrats Decry Meager Medical Care for Detainees in Funding Fight
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
The Louisiana Illuminator has a good run-down of a hearing this week over the banning of mifepristone via telehealth here: Louisiana, Trump FDA clash in court over abortion drug availability through telehealth. REMINDER: Efforts to ban the use of mifepristone are a backdoor effort to enact a national abortion ban.
An anti-abortion group expressed their outrage that ICE is killing the “unborn” in an open letter to Trump.
A Tennessee woman says she was admitted, spoke with the surgical team, had an IV placed, and then waited approximately three hours before a hospital canceled her sterilization surgery (for which she had prepaid) to ‘protect her sacred fertility’. “The woman told WSMV her reasons for pursuing sterilization included a history of assault, previous issues with other forms of birth control, and concerns about living in a state without abortion access.”
The Hill: Tennessee lawmakers float abortion amendment that would charge mothers with homicide
FOX 56: Kentucky lawmakers introduce bill that would classify abortion as homicide
Kylie Cheung at ABORTION, EVERY DAY highlights the latest approach being taken by anti-abortion zealots: Abortion coercion:
Anti-abortion activists aren’t just trying to conflate medication abortion and coerced abortions—they’re trying to make the argument that nearly all abortions are coerced.
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, for example, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America sent a memo to GOP candidates, legislators, and stakeholders, impossibly claiming that “nearly 70% of abortions coerced, unwanted or at odds with women’s own preferences.” And since Dobbs, lawmakers in multiple states have pushed to drastically expand the definition of abortion ‘coercion’—including the threat of “adverse financial consequences.” [...]
A wide range of drugs can be obtained via telehealth and be weaponized to abuse someone. Tellingly, conservatives are only going after telemedicine abortion pills instead of, say, date rape drugs.
Other Health Care News
The New York Times: New A.C.A. Plans Could Increase Family Deductibles to $31,000:
The Trump administration’s proposed new rules for Obamacare plans next year would shift more health care costs to Americans, with much higher deductibles that could lead to greater medical bills.
Under the proposal, people who rely on the Affordable Care Act for their health insurance coverage could choose plans with much lower monthly premiums. But that could leave them exposed to medical expenses totaling thousands of dollars more than A.C.A. plans do now before their insurance would kick in. [...]
Dr. Oz’s new proposal would allow one kind of health plan to raise the annual deductible to more than $15,000 for an individual and $31,000 for a family; those are much higher than current Obamacare plans. The individual deductible would be eight times the average for someone with job-based insurance.
Becker’s Hospital Review: State Medicaid budgets to lose $664B under OBBBA
Measles is sickening inmates at an ICE detention facility in Texas.
The Alabama Senate has passed legislation that would impose new requirements on insurers that use AI to make prior authorization decisions, including a mandate that any decision to deny a request must be made by a physician or other qualified provider.
The resurgence of measles has both human and financial costs. Via CIDRAP: 2025 measles resurgence carries estimated $244 million price tag.
The Trump Administration, in little more than one year, has set back healthcare, science, and medical research decades in this country. While the US enjoyed young scientists flocking to our country to learn and to work, advancing medical breakthroughs, we are now seeing young scientists leave to work abroad. The anti-vaxx position of RFK, Jr. and others has left thousands exposed to communicable diseases like measles. The life expectancy of Americans has and will continue to decline. This is a disgrace.